A Biblical Timeline Chart Offers A Creative Mode To Aid And Help Biblical Characters And Events And Truths
In our Bible group some years ago, a lady who had been a Christian and worked in the local Church for years, made this statement,"Yes, but Abraham had the Law and so he understood about......" (they were not talking about the pre-Moses law) I wonder just how many Christians would actually notice the error in this statement. Moses lived 500 years after Abraham and so it is not possible. I have since then put together a Bible timeline and explained in a more graphic way the chronology of individuals and occasions.
Unfortunately, a large number of Pastors and teachers in our churches go on and preach flimsy, light weight, superficial, shallow messages and their Church members hardly grow in biblical knowledge and understanding. Preachers love to preach'moral essays' and'warming affirmations' because supposedly, if we really love our people this is what we will do. Unfortunate it seems, if God's people are falling through the cracks'for an absence of knowledge' as long as we are nice and loving to all. In truth, the more like the world, the less relevant we are to the world.
Years ago, I was speaking on the resurrection, death, life and burial of Christ Jesus, and a retired pastor and strong preacher of Scripture, who had been in the ministry for 40 years, marched up and reproved me smartly over some interesting points I made and he referred to 1Ti 1:4'Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.' I humbly asked him if I had been teaching anything of a heretical nature at all, to which he answered"No". I continued on to describe that in the case of that particular Scripture, it was not speaking to examining Scripture but to the false teaching and school of thought of the Gnostics, but he wouldn't have it. Let me ask, how can a 40 year preacher & laborer in the Gospel, not understand and know about something that probably half the books of the New Testament relate to?
How could he study and preach the Bible fully without being aware of something that was so influential in the New Testament church? And then how can the congregation hope to comprehend these things and be able to understand their Bible effectively, if they're not informed?
Why do we get stuck in a rut of our favorite themes and feel good messages?
We teach on a text from 2 Peter and a story about Joseph and a topical from the book of Hebrews and then the obedience of John the Baptist or the humility of Moses - pieces from here and all over, but we do not put it all at once in an obvious understandable, easy to remember, perspective with a good Bible TimeLine and Church History as well. Constantly we are bombarded with new books, modernist ideas, a number of them perilously leaning toward Progressive doctrine, but if we could be instructed the basics of Church history, we then wouldn't be so bound to do the same again.
Let's us as instructors and preachers sew together the aspects of God's Word and God's plan into a complete picture that our people are able to draw on for the rest of life, helping them to comprehend God, His Eternal Plan, the role of the Church and ways to better interpret the Bible to order our lives by.
It is not difficult to do, and it's not boring if we are ready to put in a bit of study and prayer and fervor, and just perhaps you can use a Bible Timeline as well.
For more info concerning a Bible TimeLine go to our Bible TimeLine Chart web site and check out the biblical study resource.
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